So this is the first fanfiction thing I have written. I don't know if it you will like it, but I do(I suppose I wouldn't have posted it if I didn't). If it happens that we have differing views on the matter please send me a review and tell me what it is that you didn't like so that I can keep that in mind as I work to improve my writing. I promise you I won't be offended or anything. Of course if you do like it that's great and you can still review.

Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Harry Potter but if for some reason J.K. Rowling wanted to publish/claim my fanfiction as hers I would gladly give it to her since I make no money on it in any case.

Sirius was always laughing, it was the one thing about him that she would always remember. Even when his face had disappeared, lost somewhere beneath the ruins of a shattered life she couldn't forget the sound of his smiling. She couldn't seem to escape that infuriating echo and so she couldn't escape him, she would push him away, but somehow he was always there, the cousin who had mocked her and belittled her, he had turned away and left her lonely, he had killed her from the inside out. She hates him now, and when the red haired mother comes to claim vengeance in the name of family (a concept Bellatrix never truly understood) she will die hating him still, and laughing as if to prove that she can do it better.

She hates him surly, and yet she doesn't because he was the one that taught her to live, taught her how to be strong. He was the cousin that smuggled dreams into her heart, softly whispering them in the darkness because he knew she was afraid to see them. He was the boy from Gryffindor, disowned by his blood and yet so full of hope that it left a trail wherever he went, and he always made sure to drop some in the lonely corners where no one could see because he knew that she was too afraid to admit (even to herself) that she had picked them up.

Bellatrix loved her cousin and she hated herself for it, and she hated him for loving her back because they both knew that loving someone made it so much harder when you had to hate them, and she did have to hate him because he was a traitor because it was easier, and because she was too afraid for anything else. She tells herself this is the truth, but the truth is that she's caught herself between the hating and the longing, and she's trying to hold on to both of them, but the gulf is growing and she won't let go of one or the other because she is afraid that whichever one she reaches for won't be strong enough to hold her, and she needs to make a choice, but she can't yet, and it's too late and she's falling, hurtling toward the ground and splintering into a million pieces.

She looks up and she sees him standing at the precipice reaching out as if to help her make her way back up, and she hates him for whispering his dreams and she hates him for leaving his hope lying where he knew that she would find it, and she hates him for making her believe it could be true and she hates him for being all the things he is that made her want to reach for him in the first place, and she hates herself for... no. It was his fault she hated him. She hated him because it was easier, and she needed the strength to pick herself back up. Regretfully she bids him, leave her be, bitterly she screams she doesn't need him, but she knows it's a lie. As he disappears from view she wonders if he knows it too. She tells herself it doesn't matter. She convinces herself she doesn't care.

As she sits in a cell near his she can hear her own sorrow filled pleas as she screams for forgiveness and for relief, but her voice is only one of many and when no one cares enough to answer she tells herself that she is glad they didn't come. She can almost believe it. Again we find her sitting alone in Azkaban. This time his cell is empty and furiously she screams at his memory, cursing him for leaving her behind. She wonders what happened to the boy who stood at the edge of a great void looking down arms outstretched as if to pull her free, and she tells her she hates him because she's afraid to remember it was she who pushed him away.

When the Dark Lord comes to free her from her prison she cannot help, but hope for a moment that its him. She knows it isn't true, but she dares to hope, and when the Dark Lord speaks she screams with pain because he truly has forgotten her. She reminds herself that she hates him because its easier, and because she is afraid, and because it hurts to much to care. He's falling and as his body slips beyond the veil she knows that she has killed him. This time her scream is one of pleasure because this is what she lives for and she's glad that she has hated him because he's dead, and because she is afraid to remember that she might have loved him too.

Sirius always laughed, it was who he was. As a child Bellatrix always seemed to be screaming. She told herself it was to drown out the sound of his mirth. She hated it. She hated him.

She died with his laughter on her lips.